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I’ve been teaching writing professionally for 19 years now, at such venues as the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, the Surrey International Writers Conference, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, as well as as writer-in-residence at the Richmond Hill (Ontario) Public Library; the Kitchener (Ontario) Public Library; the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy; the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron facility; and through the Writers in Electronic Residence program.

Nothing gives me more joy than when my students do well, and so it’s with great pride and pleasure that I draw your attention to the fabulous new anthology Women of the Apocalypse, an anthology of stories (“Four women, Four Shooters, Four destinies to save the world”) by Eileen Bell, Roxanne Felix, Ryan T. McFadden, and Billie Millholland. The book — a handsome trade paperback with an eye-catching stark black-and-white cover — is published by Absolute XPress, a division of Calgary’s Hades Publications.

Eileen Bell and Ryan T. McFadden were my students at the Banff Centre (in the ski-resort town of Banff, Alberta) in 2006.

Ryan very kindly sent me a copy of this book, and I was deeply touched to see that both he and Eileen thank me in the acknowledgments.

Ryan: “Also a ‘thanks’ to Rob Sawyer for kicking my ass when I needed it.”

Eileen: “Thank you, Rob Sawyer, for Banff, and everything since.”

This is, without doubt, one of the major theme anthologies of 2009, and deserves a place on the Aurora Award ballot — as do the individual stories. The anthology recently made the bestsellers’ list published in the Calgary Herald.